


Desiderium

by kriegslastbraincell



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, it's just love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:53:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26652505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriegslastbraincell/pseuds/kriegslastbraincell
Summary: With his fingers around her memory, grasping and clinging, Krieg hangs onto Maya. Just like she asked.
Relationships: Krieg & Maya (Borderlands), Krieg/Maya (Borderlands)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43





	Desiderium

**Author's Note:**

> Desiderium: an ardent desire or longing  
> especially; a feeling of loss or grief for something lost

When Maya was alive, Krieg slept in her bed. They were two islands floating in a roiling sea of handspun cotton and threadbare clothing. Krieg was a decent sort with enough sense to bathe and strip to his undermost layer before crawling into the soft fabric, heavy with the scent of Maya’s skin. 

Maya preferred to sleep naked to her waist. She explained once that she liked the way the fabric brushed her skin. That she slept better when a breeze swept across the snow-capped land and into the window, sliding across her exposed legs in the dead heat of Pandora’s ceaseless summer.

She liked to sleep on her side, and conveniently, Krieg did too. They often faced one another. Eye to eye even in the shy light of the Elpis-- not yet burned by Lilth’s touch. 

Maya fell asleep easily, smoothly. Krieg tripped, stumbled, and plummeted into dreamless darkness every night. But the darkness was never swallowing. His sleep was restless, yes, but it was tempered by the blue shadows tucked in every lightless corner of the room. Dark as it was in the recesses of his broken mind, Krieg could always find his way through by the guidance of sapphire starlight. 

There were precious few places that were safe (enough) on Pandora. Sanctuary II was one of those places. Sanctuary was where Maya came to roost, Krieg at her heels. In fewer words that dripped with blood and spit, Krieg had told her “where you go, I go. Where you are, I am. My home is with you.” 

Despite the lewdness of his unrestrained words, Maya’s glazed lips pulled up. She understood, sure, but it was so much more. She cherished the man who came as he was. The fractured parts of a person who struggled against the binds of forgotten memories, wet with pain and loss. 

Krieg wakes up next to Maya and grunts softly to tamp down the primeval urge to shout nonsense at the absolute peak of his splintered morning breath. Sometimes, in tame moments where the sun created a patchwork of gold and ivory across his skin, Krieg, the sane part of him, could sit closer to the surface. He could gaze longingly out of his one good eye and see, really _see_ , the spoils hidden in a rust stained world coloured yellow by chaos and destruction. 

Krieg likes the way Maya looks draped in the pale, early morning light. He sees the smoothness in her face as she breathes in wispy puffs, the stray angles of her shorn hair, the gentle part of her lips still stained with gunmetal and cobalt. He reaches out with hesitation, afraid if he moves too quickly-- mirrors too closely the violent gibberish spoken by his muscles while he washes the sand with a liquid both fresh and arterial --she’d turn to ash and silt beneath his hand.

She stays whole, warm, and sound as he follows a single strand of light dancing across her arm. His touch is illuminating, thrilling to her rarity. _Sapphire starlight_ echoes from the gnawing furor vibrating the fault lines in his marred skull. Krieg is a divided calamity, a ravaged cataclysm. His mind is cluttered, but his heart is full. 

The softness of love is foreign and deeply frightening, but the agreement it sows between who he was and who he is forced to be acts as the turnkey to his more unsavory tendencies. Maya’s presence alone is enough to distill the firewater that courses through his veins. 

She stirs and flutters her eyes like the gossamer curtain dancing on the cold air. Maya looks up, meeting Krieg’s gaze with a smile blooming on her lips. 

Her voice is honeysuckle and sandpaper. “Hey, big guy.” 

Krieg bites back his baying tongue. _It’s too early,_ he warns. _Let her wake up gently. She deserves that._

Maya smiles again, sanguine and sleepy. Her liquid eyes meet his for a moment and her mouth draws attention to his covered cheek. She kisses him there with the patience of a forgiving deity. Her touch is guidance and solace, shepherding his sanity through the gale swelling in his chest. 

Krieg leans in. He kisses her back with the leather and metal. Their foreheads touch and serenity grips him. 

He chokes down another outburst, transmuting its energy to a grunt. Maya laughs airly. “What is it?” 

“I CRAVE THE FEELING DEVASTATION,” he sighs. “I WANT TO BATHE IN THE HEART SWEAT.” 

“And I love you.” 

Krieg’s arms wrap around his lover. He holds them together, intimidated by his own bulwark strength. That fear is always there in the back of his mind. That he’d hold too tightly, that he’d lose her that way he lost himself. Krieg struggles to hold ground and dares his insensitivities to stop chomping at the bit. 

It’s a battleground, bloody and strewn with the debris of war. Broken limbs, visera in varying states of decay, blood enough to bathe in. But with Maya here, the scent of her skin filling his nose and lungs, the dust has a moment to settle. 

Krieg holds her tighter and Maya smiles against him. 

“Don’t let me go, Krieg.” 

Krieg wakes up on his back. Cold, damp, and surrounded on all four sides by cold stone and loose silt. He brings his aching hands to his face, looks at his empty palms, and watches as bits of dirt flake from his skin. Maya’s memory falls through his fingers, catching on the webbing before drifting away. 

He looks up at the ceiling and notes the slumbering tribulation writhing in his chest. For a second, Krieg allows himself the luxury of just breathing. No thoughts of death and destruction, no rampant chaos, no nothing. Just the stale, cavernous air filling his lungs. 

Maya’s scent lingers in his nose and he thinks to himself, _I won’t let you go, Maya._

_I promise._

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I have been listening to the remix of "The Memories Are All I Have Left" from the DLC on repeat and I could not contain my feelings. Gestures vaguely. This happened.


End file.
